We collect books in the belief that we are preserving them when in fact it is the books that preserve their collector.

For only that which we knew and practiced at age 15 will one day constitute our attraction. And one thing, therefore, can never be made good: having neglected to run away from home.

The power of a text when it is read is different from the power it has when it is copied out. Only the copied text thus commands the soul of him who is occupied with it, whereas the mere reader never discovers the new aspects of his inner self that are opened by the text, that road cut through the interior jungle forever closing behind it: because the reader follows the movement of his mind in the free flight of day-dreaming, whereas the copier submits it to command.

It is precisely the purpose of the public opinion generated by the press to make the public incapable of judging, to insinuate into it the attitude of someone irresponsible, uninformed.

Genuine polemics approach a book as lovingly as a cannibal spices a baby.

The killing of a criminal can be moral-but never its legitimation.

Those who do not learn how to decipher photographs will be the illiterate of the future.